The last phrase explains, doubtless, why there is no interference with attendance at church; and it is certainly to be noted that the churches are crowded to the doors and, apparently, most of the time. Some hope and believe that the separation of State and Church and the obligation placed upon believers to maintain their own churches out of their own pockets will have this good effect at least: that the quality of religious preaching will improve and the standard of the ministry be raised. If the poor duped populace can be successfully delivered from the brigandage and trickery of unscrupulous and avaricious priests, of whom there has been a great host in the past, it will be a benefit not only to the suffering people but to the cause of true religion itself. And what I describe as “true religion,” the living spirit of goodness in the hearts and minds of men, is growing in the very land where God is regarded as counter-revolutionary and banished, officially, as a traitor to mankind. Not by the decrees of Lenin nor of any other person will that which is rooted in the nature and needs of men be cast out--the need of worship and the aspiration after the ideal. The Communists realise that “Logicians may reason about abstractions but the great mass of men must have images,” to this extent, at least, that they have placed in every school and public building portraits and busts of Karl Marx and Lenin. The only time some of us saw Lenin he was sitting for the sculptor, who was busy preparing his new graven image! And whether they realise it or not, it remains the fact that the Communists have not destroyed religion. They have simply changed the creed. And for the Inquisition, with its thumb-screws and its flaming faggots, the Extraordinary Commission supplies an adequate substitute! CHAPTER IX Off to Moscow